"Average wage £29,000"

[liketochange]

I've had an ad on my Facebook for one of those "your baby born on this day" type posters with today's stats, which includes the average wage of £29,000. I'm aware this is the average wage according to stats, but there were loads of comments saying that was wrong, "that's more like household" etc. AIBU to ask does £29k seems that unlikely to be average in your opinion? Do bigger salaries drag it up making it look unrealistic to most?

I think it is very insulting to suggest that all people on a low wage are below average intelligence

No-one is saying that. The below average intelligence quote is a statistics joke that I posted upthread when we were arguing about different types of averages and data quality, as in which is more reliable a large scale survey carried out by an organisation staffed by experts in statistics who have multiple qualifications in carrying out representative surveys or people's perceptions based on their immediate social circle. Or the insistence by Michael Gove that all schools must be rated as above average by Ofsted.

This question was actually covered on the BBC radio 4 podcast More or Less quite recently and they discussed how they categorised data quality and reliability into 4 levels with the large scale studies where it has been carefully checked that the sample chosen accurately represents the population as a whole being the best and self reported comments by a small group of people on a particular website being the worst .

@anothernotherone it's not 17k it's under 16k 40 hours on £8.21 for over 25's. I have already stated in my region, it's only you which in confused by that. If you want to know how much is disposable income you will have to find someone with some. After mortgage, travel, food and utilities that's the money gone. We survive on 21k between us with no benefits as we are not entitled to any.

@mindproject I wouldn't say 13k is a low amount considering you dont have a mortgage. I run our home for 3 including a car on less than that a year after our mortgage.

£8.21 x 40 x 52 = £17 076 pa, which is full time on NMW.

Obviously not everyone works 40 hours a week,but that's standard for full time, or maybe 37.5 hours, which would be £16k, so anyone on NMW who is earning less than £16k and is 25 or over is either working part time or being paid less than NMW, so neither is really relevant when talking about what mean or median full time salaries are.

Fowles94 it's over 17k for 40 hours as BarbaraofSevillle shows. My comment about disposable income was pointing out that people are not comparing like with like - all sorts of different measures have been chucked onto the thread, not measuring the same thing. I don't want to know disposable income, I'm pointing out that statistics on disposable income for households have been chucked into the mix. Comparing measures of totally different things is meaningless.

I am surprised that you don't receive child tax credit on that income if you have a child (you say family of 3).

Also child benefit of course, on that household income.

@RedRiverShore "average wage" was what was written on the baby poster, I'm not sure an explanation as to median averages etc would have the same cute effect on a "born this day" poster. Though it's been very interesting to read here! My reason for the thread has always been curiosity that the Facebook respondents just chose to disbelieve it as it wasn't their experience.

("Cute" said tongue in cheek, not my taste tbh!)

Plenty of people on here also disbelieve the statistic and there are as many people who think it is a tiny amount as a massive one.

I think it may have come from here, first thing that came up on Google

www.findcourses.co.uk/inspiration/articles/average-salary-uk-2018-14105

Looks a likely source for a poster like that and it does say average.

On the disbelief, do you ever hear people 'self identify' as poor?

I would say I almost never do. People tend to classify themselves and similar people around them as normal, ordinary or perhaps temporarily struggling. (I've certainly seen 'ordinary' used here as a sort of unknowing euphemism for poor / disadvantaged). Then everyone else in relation to that. So people in the 10-20th centile think they're normal and there just happen to a suprising number of unusually rich people, somewhere else.

I suppose there is an element of pride involved, perhaps optimism that their condition can improve - yet they remain the same people. I think a confusion of personal / class identity and actual income level comes into play.

I think there's also a sort of 'reverse boiled frog syndrome', in that, if you live in a community that has had consistently low wages and this has always been your normal, why would you notice that wages and living standards in the rest of the country have gradually improved, leaving you behind? You're stuck in the cold water, same as it's ever been, while the people whose economic circumstances have warmed up, blithely accept their lot as normal too, without very much examination of the real changes that have taken place - easy to do if your own career trajectory coincides with a period of economic growth.

That link actually says the average income for a full time worker is £35,423 and that £29009 is part-time and full-time combined RedRiverShore as you say it says average and does not explain further how averages were calculated nor explicitly state net or gross (which usually means it's gross but it's not stated).

The findcourses.co.uk site claims the ONS as it's source, but ONS figures look quite different and seem to refer to different measures:

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/householddisposableincomeandinequality/yearending2018

If the user of a statistic doesn't make clear exactly what the statistic is measuring and what the source is, and allows for assumptions and guesswork, it is valid to doubt the statistics liketochange - it's not only possible to just make stuff up, it's more often the case that a headline figure is used out of context or that statistics are displayed, or indeed gathered, with conscious or unconscious bias.

Lies damned lies and statistics can be true when too little information is provided about the source and basis of the statistics in question.

Yes I know it doesn't explain much but this £29000 was found on Facebook so someone probably just done a quick google and come up with that, they probably didn't read all the details about what it was as it was for a baby poster, It does say in bold type £29,009 average. They probably just googled average salary and that came up or something similar, OP's post doesn't state whether it's full or part time or both.

RedRiverShore I agree with you. The OP's point appears to be a patronising chuckle at people who doubt statistics which don't tie in with their personal experience, and my point was that (while of course most people live in a bubble of similar people and properly collected population wide data is vastly more meaningful than a tiny self selecting sample) in this case doubting the statistic seems valid - someone appears to have largely pulled it out of the air.

Blimey people get rattled when it comes to salaries! 29k is average for all full and part-time workers. There are areas and industries that earn far higher and also lower, hence it is average. I think most people get used to living off what they have. I personally think 29k is low and the uk is expensive to live in. I earn well over double that amount and don’t feel well off at all. Family of four in north west. But it’s all relative to the lifestyle you get used to I guess.

Well no one really feels well off or that their salary is high... but yours blatently is compared to the population...!

Of course people get rattled because we have a very unequal and unfair society where some people get paid really well for doing very little and other people are slogging their guts out and having to put with all kinds of crap for a pittance. It's a sore point for a lot of people.

The poorly paid also get annoyed when others come along (only really on Mumsnet) who are living on double the "national average" but declare it's not that much and they need more, more, more for their lifestyle. Well where is that more going to come from? Do you want to keep taking from those that are paid the least?

How would I be taking money from those that are least paid??? Makes no sense at all. I’m currently doing an MBA so I hope the hard work and effort I’m putting into that will increase my earnings further. Not sure how that impacts on low earners?? Very bitter.

Headline ONS stats are quoted weekly which is annoying, but the £550 weekly figure here
www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2017provisionaland2016revisedresults#main-points, for 2017 would translate into 28,600 annual, assuming that multiplying by 52 is appropriate, which I’m not sure about.

Looking at the ONS stats for disposable income and saying “the ONS figures look different” is a strange thing to do. Of course “the ONS figures” won’t be comparable if you don’t look at the same measure.

I think you’ll find that the massive amount of tax I pay helps low earners.

And you say unequal but I work very long hours at times in what can be a stressful job so I deserve every penny I earn.

Corporations only have so much money they can spend on wages. If they are paying the top earnings more and more there is less and less for those at the bottom. We all get a piece of the pie. Some people get a huge piece but are greedy and still want more.

If I was paid a huge salary I'd be happy to give a lot of that back in tax. What would actually help, would be if everyone was paid a decent wage. Then you wouldn't have people feeling so bitter about it.

*earners

Although , mindproject, statistics show we are nothing like as unequal as the left wing press makes out.

www.ft.com/content/505fc7ba-7e4b-11e9-81d2-f785092ab560

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"Using official data for measuring the gap between rich and poor, the IFS research showed that people living in households in the richest 20 per cent of the population had on average £96,000 a year of income from market sources — employment, private pensions and investments. Those in the bottom 20 per cent had market incomes on average of only £7,700, leaving them with more than 12 times as much income from private sources.

Once direct taxes had been applied and households had received the social security from the state, the average spending power of the richest fifth fell to £64,000 while the poorest fifth’s disposable income rose to £12,500, shrinking the income differential so that the richest 20 per cent have five times as much net income than the poorest 20 per cent. "

The difference between rich and poor is about 5 x (which is fairly fair difference in a capitalist free society) once massively high income taxes etc at least 50% for a lot of the better off are taken off and benefits are added on like child benefit and tax credits and housing benefit.

I would say its fairly average, of the people I stay in touch with from University we are all on at least 30k; all currently living around the country so not all in London or typically higher paying places.